SIERRA MADRE – Demonstrating the need to upgrade the city’s water infrastructure, Public Works Director Bruce Inman pointed to a large hole in a 90-year-old water main that burst this week under Sierra Madre Boulevard.

Faced with a proposed water rate increase of between about 33 percent and 37.5 percent over the next five years, residents were given a tour Thursday evening of the city’s aging water system and an explanation of the region’s diminishing groundwater supply.

“There’s not a week that goes by that we don’t have a leak somewhere in the system,” Inman told residents, estimating that about 30 percent of the system’s infrastructure dates to the 1920s. “When you have a system that’s old, you’re going to have leaks.”

On Tuesday, the city clerk will count the number of written protests that customers have submitted in opposition to the proposed increase.

If more than 50 percent of the city’s water customers protest as outlined in Proposition 218, the rate hike will not occur. If not, the City Council will then hold a public hearing and consider an ordinance to approve the hike.

The last water rate increase occurred five years ago. The city has raised rates three times in the last 20 years, Inman said.

“We need to address the age of our water system and we have been doing that with our reservoir replacement projects, and we need to address the fact that the aquifer – that water table that we draw all of our water from – is declining,” Inman said. “Both of those issues need to be addressed and neither can be addressed without increasing the rates.”

But Sierra Madre resident John Crawford says he has his doubts that the city’s proposed water rate increase is necessary.

Crawford has launched a campaign on his blog, “The Tattler,” and is collecting protest forms in an attempt to halt the hike.

“We get a lot of Chicken Little talk – `pipes are breaking, pipes are rusty, and we should all fear for the end of the world,’ which is usual talk you get when people are asking for a lot of money,” he said. “There are a lot of people on fixed incomes in Sierra Madre that this will hurt.”

City officials, however, warn that without the rate increase, Sierra Madre’s water budget would be operating in the red as early as next year and the approximately $2million in water fund reserves would be exhausted by 2015-16.

In addition, because reserves are low, the city would be in default on its bond notes and could face penalties or other repercussions, said Karin Schnaider, the city’s administrative services director.

“There is no other long-term solution other than the water rate increase,” Schnaider said.

Water rate adjustments would be based on a tier system that considers the amount of water used and the size of a customer’s water meter, Inman said.

The maximum rate increase for the third – or highest – tier water user would be about 37.5 percent over five years, just over 36 percent for the middle tier or average users, and just under 33 percent for first-tier users, he said.

Mayor Joe Mosca said the time is now to invest in the city’s water system. A rate increase would allow the city to match local dollars with federal funds to improve Sierra Madre’s water system so that citizens will not have to shoulder as much of a burden, he said.

“To those who think this is too expensive, it will be more expensive in the future if we do nothing now,” he said.

Councilwoman MaryAnn MacGillivray said she believes “a case can be made for a proposed increase” but that the city could have done a better job of explaining the situation to residents.

“I don’t think the people of Sierra Madre are protesting the fact that we need money; they are protesting the way we are going about this,” she said.

In addition to Thursday’s tour, the city has posted information about the proposed increase online.

Under the proposed increase, the typical residential/single family customer with a five-eighths-inch water meter will have a bi-monthly bill of $125.24, an increase of $17.22 or $8.61 per month, according to city documents.

A reduced rate would still be available to very low-income customers, officials said.

Brenda Gazzar is a multilingual multimedia reporter who has worked for a variety of news outlets in California and in the Middle East since 2000. She has covered a range of issues, including breaking news, immigration, law and order, race, religion and gender issues, politics, human interest stories and education. Besides the Los Angeles Daily News and its sister papers, her work has been published by Reuters, the Denver Post, Ms. Magazine, the Jerusalem Post, USA Today, the Christian Science Monitor, the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, The Cairo Times and others. Brenda speaks Spanish, Hebrew and intermediate Arabic and is the recipient of national, state and regional awards, including a National Headliners Award and one from the Associated Press News Executives' Council. She holds a dual master's degree in Communications/Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Texas at Austin.

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